Harlow is a town of working families in their thirties and forties, many of them in the houses the state built for families like them. Just over half own their home. Nearly three in ten rent from a social landlord. The typical resident is in their late thirties. Few towns show their post-war origins in the census as clearly as this one.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 census unless it says otherwise. About 55% of Harlow's households own their home, and about 15% rent privately. Most of the rest, about 29%, rent from the council or a housing association. Harlow was built after the war to rehouse families from overcrowded London, and that's why the social renting share is so high. The town was built to house people, and a large part of it still does that job.
The typical Harlow resident is about 37, and about 30% of people are between 25 and 44. That puts the town's population mostly in the years of mortgages, nurseries and commuting. Harlow ages slowly because new families keep moving into the post-war terraces.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income across Harlow at about £58,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. That's a gross figure averaged across the town's neighbourhoods. Tax, the mortgage or rent and the cost of getting to work all come off it before a household feels it. Many Harlow households are two working adults, so it's two modest wages added together. It would be a mistake to read it as one large salary.
About 21% of Harlow's households are couples with dependent children and about 14% are lone parents. About 29% are one person living alone. Some of those single-person households, about 12% of all households, are a pensioner living alone. Families are the largest single group, as the people who designed Harlow intended.
About 25% of Harlow's adults hold a degree-level qualification, and about 21% have no formal qualifications. Full-time students make up about 2% of residents. Harlow College has its campus in the town and there's a university campus in Old Harlow, yet students hardly register in the population. The families on the estates set Harlow's age. The lecture halls barely move it.
Harlow's population is ordinary in the best sense: working families in their thirties and forties, a large social-rented sector and average incomes. A buyer moving in will be joining people at the same stage of life.